


Temperament

by dehautdesert



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: A Bunch Of Other Things Probably, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Cultural Differences, Dialogue Heavy, Disturbing Themes, Incest, Mental Scarring, Mentioned FGM, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Multi, Mutilation, Non-Graphic Unnecessary Mastectomy, Not With The Same Parent, Parent-Child Relationship, Parent/Child Incest, Physical Scarring, Rule 63, Terrible things, These Characters Are All Screwed, Unreliable Narrator, Warped Gender Views, bad things will happen, disguises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 07:42:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13759446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dehautdesert/pseuds/dehautdesert
Summary: Maeglin is less than a day away from the Hidden City, and the shadows of fear and doubt swarm both the road behind and the road ahead.Then, at the last moment, her mother has an idea...





	Temperament

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I'm off across the pond on Saturday and I'm a moderately nervous flier, but this way if we do crash and burn at least I'll die knowing I left the world a fanfic that was actually finished. 
> 
> And now for my obligatory Apology for the work. There's a lot I could say about this one. Firstly, heed the tags. Secondly, I'm unsure upon re-reading as to whether I erred on the side of too much exposition or leaving things too vague, but I guess I'm free to answer questions on that or anything else for at least the next couple of days... and hopefully also upon my glorious return. Thirdly, always remember that I suck - but if the formatting also sucks, then it's the computer's fault, not mine. :D
> 
> Now, enjoy this horrible, horrible story, my friends...

 

 

*~*~*

 

 

The cloud was broken out over the plain.

Where they stood, Maeglin and her mother were safe, but she could see the danger out in the southwest from where she was. The shafts of yellow light taller than the greatest of the trees she'd been raised under, leaning down towards the rippling grass below. Staining it. She watched it with trepidation, as though in her head the light was from an eye, and the eye would move, and scour the plain over the ridge and the cliff and the heights they stood on, and see them – and in seeing them reveal them.

And he would see them too.

"Ah, is it not wondrous, daughter?" said her mother, coming to her side. "Arien's rays coming through the clouds to give us light?" she laughed. "To think, I was even older than you the first time I saw such a sight."

"Because there was no sun when you were as old as me," Maeglin pointed out sullenly. "I do not think you ever mistrusted any sky as I do."

Seven times had Maeglin seen the sky before this venture. Seven journeys out from under the shade of the trees. But this was the first time her mother had come with her, and it was so different to when she was with her father, and the wide open spaces were their enemy.

 _Mother probably saw the sky the very day she was born,_ thought Maeglin. _And the stars, if not the sun and moon._ Her mother seemed rather to _bathe_ in open space, and in the rivers of air her weariness had been swept away.

At that moment her arm went around Maeglin's shoulders and she kissed her cheek, ignoring how her daughter tried to shrug her off.

"When we are in my brother's kingdom, and your father's shadow is behind us, dear one, then you will learn to love the sky – I promise you."

Maeglin was not so certain.

" _'Wise-Elves' your mother's people call themselves, in their arrogance, but while they have much in learning they_ know _nothing in practice. It is their foolishness that brings the bloodshed upon the land."_

Father was far behind them (or was he?) but his teachings remained in Maeglin's heart.

And now that she had grown used to the grating, twisting feeling in her chest that he would be waiting for them around every corner, that every shadow that pulled upon the corner of her eye was his, that every dark space they passed held within his hidden form, waiting to enact his retribution…

Now that that had become normal to her, she had more time to think about what lay at the end of their road, should they have reached it. The great city, and the elves within it.

Ondolinde.

Maeglin had known two other settlements in her life. Two other peoples besides her parents and her father's swords, and her father's armour, and her father's trees, and her father's darkness. That knowledge was little, yet that knowledge was enough for her to suspect she would need to tread carefully upon the glowing stones that paved the streets of the city she and her mother travelled to.

For the Khazad of Nogrod were a merry people, and they had much knowledge of which they had taught her but a part from the goodness of theirs hearts and for love of her father…

… yet always had her father insisted she dress as a boy and be presented as a male when among them.

" _The Khazad are different to the kinslayers_ ," he had said. " _They do not blanch at the thought of teaching their females to be useful. But said females are rarer than they are among our people and as such far more precious than they are to us. And they do not let them wander at their will – so they will be angry at me if they hear I let my daughter gad about across lands the servants of the dark one pass through._ "

Hardly had Maeglin ever crossed those lands, and never gadded about over them, but since she respected the Khazad Maeglin had instead protested, _"But they understand that our two peoples are different, surely?"_

Her father had not answered. He had, she'd inferred, been hiding something from her – like Maeglin had been hiding when she'd assured her mother neither party had anything left to teach her, and if Maeglin's mother had seen through that then it was telling she had nonetheless not questioned it.

Still, even now, Maeglin had dressed as a boy for travel.

It had been preying on her mind somewhat; that this was her instinct, yet her father had compared the dwarves' treatment of their dams _favourably_ to that of her mother's people and their _nissi_. That and much else she'd heard from both her parents that she'd pushed aside when deciding that this journey was vital to hers and her mother's prosperity.

"Come," her mother said. "My skills out on the plain have not faded so badly that we shall go hungry tonight."

Maeglin turned away from the uncertain rays and gazed upon the duck, upon the rock her mother gestured towards. She bit her lip.

"I do not think we have enough cover here for a fire," she said. "We should keep going."

"Until the trees?" asked her mother.

"Until the next cliff faces. You said there were caves there."

She observed the almost silent sigh of her mother in the dropping of her shoulders. That meant 'no'.

"We would be riding into the night," her mother pointed out. "These are not the horses of your father. They cannot ride unfamiliar terrain without at least a little light."

 _They would if they were given the crop_ , thought Maeglin, but she knew her mother would not like to hear it. She looked at the duck again, eyes searching out and finding almost instantly the dark hole where the arrow had pierced its breast. The drops of blood upon it.

The crop was far less permanent than an arrow, and yet…

 _"More of the 'learning' of your mother,"_ her father would say. _"Those of us with sense cannot make sense of it, and so they think us ignorant."_

She clenched her fists. "We will ride to the trees then," she said. "And have any fire put out before it gets dark."

Her mother smiled, hands upon Maeglin's shoulders. "We will be fine, darling. You'll see. We've made it this far after all."

As though the words were a portent Maeglin found herself looking swiftly back towards home, in case he was coming up behind them. He was not. Yet he was moving closer, she had no doubt, and certainly there would be no hesitance in _him_ to travel unfamiliar ground in the dark.

 _We having been lengthening our distance in the light_ , she thought. _He hates to travel under the sun. he will not catch up. He will not._

But she knew him. She knew he would. The weight of the knife forged for skinning game but hung at her side for protection and already nicked and dented by the hide of spiders felt heavier. She had used the knife already to defend herself and her mother already on the journey. Could she… ?

Anguirel was resting on the horse's saddle. She did not think she could use Anguirel. Not against its true master.

 

*~*~*

 

They reached the trees as the sun began to dip and the clouds went such a brilliant pink behind her that when Maeglin chanced to look behind her for a dark figure on the horizon she found herself having stopped her horse altogether to stare at it.

She had never seen this colour before.

"Beautiful isn't it, Daughter?" said her mother, coming back to join her. Maeglin felt a touch of embarrassment, being the one who had been saying 'we must keep going, we must keep going' every time her mother had wanted to stop since they'd passed the worst of the danger. But her mother did not mention it. "I remember my aunt had a dress of just that colour when I was a girl – and how she would dance in the light of Laurelin in that colour, Lómiel! Ah, I have not danced in so long now…"

Maeglin was not sure she understood what 'dancing' was. This annoyed her, though she could not say why, and from one moment to the next the brilliant pink looked less beautiful.

" _All sparkle and glitter are works of the kinslayers,_ " her father said in her memories. " _False lights and false stars; doomed attempts at copying the glory of those above. They say alone among them your mother's uncle King Kinslayer ever achieved such a thing, yet it brought no happiness to anyone and all the rest of them only wasted their time."_

He'd laid the spearhead out before her.

_"But shiny trinkets and bright colours are but distractions to catch the eyes of twittering birds. True beauty is in line, and function."_

Maeglin remembered herself again. "We should hurry and make camp," she said.

Her mother sighed. "You are so like your grandfather, you know." She shook her head. "So serious."

This startled Maeglin even as she had been turning back towards the forest, for her mother almost never mentioned the High-King.

But as they came closer and closer to her brother's kingdom perhaps, Maeglin wondered, her other family was also in her mother's thoughts? Her father? Her other brother? Her cousins? _Her own_ _mother_?

"Did you…" she asked slowly, "ever think about going to him instead?" She swallowed. "When we go to Ondolinde the king will not let us leave again. You told me this."

Her mother shrugged. "He let me go once, and here I am, returning."

A misleading appraisal of the situation, Maeglin thought. "And my grandfather?"

With a sigh, her mother joined her in looking back the way they'd come, but not in fear, as Maeglin did.

"No one leaves Ondolinde," she said after a pause. "Or almost no one. I do not think Turukano would do so even to take umbrage with your father. But my father, and my brother Findekano…"

"You think they might hunt Father down?" Maeglin asked. "Slay him?"

"I am sure they wouldn't," said her mother, but too quickly. "Our family are proud though. As a member I am considered at least part-theirs, and theirs before my own, and I'll admit I'd fear some attempt at retribution for 'stealing' me, as they might see it."

 _As it was_ , Maeglin sometimes thought. Now was one of those times – yet not a time to test her mother's pride, she decided.

" – but I am sure, despite all _his_ griping about the Kinslaying, that they would not take your father's life. Your grandfather is too sensible for such a thing, however much your father's actions might anger him.

 _Yet it might be for the best if he did,_ Maeglin sometimes thought. Now was such a time, and it twisted her insides to think it. Her mother reached out to put a reassuring arm upon her arm, but she turned her horse towards the trees before she felt more than the slightest brush of fingertips along her sleeve.

"We'll need to start that fire soon," she said.

 

*~*~*

 

The stars did not penetrate the cover of these trees, lesser though they were by far than those of Nan Elmoth. Maeglin and her mother plucked the bird, gutted and cut it into pieces that would cook faster so Maeglin could put the fire out almost as soon as the last of the orange faded from the sky. There was still a square of waybread too, which her mother snapped in half and shared between them. Maeglin saw her mother's half snapped again, a piece of it hidden away when she thought Maeglin wasn't looking.

 _If anything goes wrong_ , Maeglin thought, _she will give that last piece to me_.

She snapped her own behind her back and pocketed it so, if anything went wrong, she would give it to her mother.

"Are you sure this will be our last night in the wilds?" she asked. They sat side by side on the sturdy branch of a huge oak, almost entirely hidden by leaves and night, just in case the fire had been noticed.

"Quite sure." Her mother peered ahead at the dark trunks and the glimmers of moonlight that revealed their silhouettes. Maeglin was certain now, after travelling in this way for so many days, that her mother still had trouble seeing in this low light.

Still, even though she'd lived longer than Maeglin had in Nan Elmoth's darkness. This troubled Maeglin, for she could think of two explanations, and both were miserable.

" _You have heard your mother's gripes about her kinslaying kin_ ," her father had said. " _They teach the girls among them to be useless, and if you had grown up among them you would be as useless as they. Even now your mother can hunt, and that is all, and even then only in good light._ "

Maeglin did not think her mother was useless at anything but hunting, even if hunting was certainly her best skill. Her needlework was passable, and the waybread Maeglin chewed on was edible. But it may have been that her mother struggled because she had not been well-taught by the kinslay – by the _Noldor_ , and these were the people Maeglin would be going to now.

Of course, she'd known that before. But she checked back again the way they'd come, and ahead, and out to both sides – and then swallowed and did it again to make sure he was not there. They had few other options.

"Ai, my heart is restless," said her mother, though she smiled. "My brother and niece will be overjoyed to meet you, dearest. How they shall love you."

Maeglin was not so sure. The other explanation for the discrepancy in their vision was that Maeglin only saw better in the dark because she was of the darkness. She did not think the elves of Light would appreciate that.

" _The 'elves of light' have no appreciation for what lies beneath_ ," her father had said. More than once.

"Daughter?" her mother asked. Maeglin must have seemed downcast even through the dark.

She averted her eyes. "You think they will like me?" she asked.

Her mother grinned. "I said not 'like', but 'love'," she said. "They will _love_ you, Lómiel."

"Perhaps," said Maeglin. She heard her mother's words in a way she did not think they had been intended. "But there are some among the Un-Mothers whom I love, but do not like, and I would not want to be thought of the same way by your kin."

These words made her mother still, the hand upon her shoulder tighten, as though some grave danger formed merely in the speaking of the name 'Un-Mother' – the name of Maeglin's father's mother's tribe.

Her father's mother, who was foremost in her heart of loved yet not liked ones.

Maeglin knew well how it pained her mother to speak of them. To think of them. Of what they did. Of what they had done. Yet Maeglin had been thinking of them and their doings much that day. They were the only people she knew apart from the dwarves.

"No," said her mother. "No, that will not happen – you are my daughter. You are my daughter, whatever happened in the past at the hands of those… those…"

"I've said before I went ahead with it of my own free will," Maeglin muttered, but moved on quickly not wanting to get into all that again when it upset her mother so. "What will my uncle think of me when he is told – 'here is a girl who walks the path of the Un-Mother, what your people call a ' _ner_ ', and cannot be as a mother, what you call the _nissi_ '?"

"Lómiel, my love, it does not work that way among my people. And there are _nissi_ who work the forges, if not many…"

"And none of the king's blood?"

"Well, he'll make an exception for you. I'll make him make an exception."

Maeglin frowned. "If he is the king, then how can anyone make him do anything? Must he not be obeyed?"

Her mother chuckled. "Well, there are ways of getting around that once you get to know him." She paused. "But Lómiel, do not worry so much about it. I had not… I mean, I suppose we will have to explain what happened with… those people, to my brother, but neither he nor anyone else will think badly of you for it." She took Maeglin's hand. "I promise you."

With a small sigh, Maeglin tried to pull her hand away a little, but found her mother hold it tighter for every movement. She gave her a look she supposed in retrospect would not actually have been seen.

"I would not have them think badly of my grandmother either. It is not impossible that they might meet some time in the future."

And then her mother's kin might take retribution on her father's as well as he himself, for so little a problem.

 _"There's hardly anything there to miss,"_ her father had said at the time. Grandmother had slapped him for making light of it, but the sons of Feanor had killed for less at Aqualonde.

Maeglin's mother had certainly promised death to her own husband and his mother, and his sisters and their whole tribe when he had returned with Maeglin from her coming-of-age. She had screamed her promises and rent them into his skin with her nails – the only time her daughter had ever been frightened of her.

 _Kinslayer blood_ , her father had said. Had always said. Yet he had seemed more delighted than anything else by his success in revealing it in his own wife.

In the present, a long time passed before her mother responded. "Nothing could stop our family from thinking badly of your father's kin for what they did to you, beloved. No recompense could ever move me to forgive them. Yet I promise you, Daughter, I will intercede on their behalf to my brother to save their lives if the occasion should ever call for it. Killing them would not erase what was done."

She leant her head down against Maeglin's shoulder and put one arm around her back. She did not put the other around her chest though, for she was loathe to touch her there. The last time she had even cried.

Then Maeglin was suddenly alarmed, and knew not why, but she tensed up and straightened her back, craned her neck over her mother's head to see if anything (he) approached them from that side, then looked down to the tethered horses, suddenly fearing he had come and taken them without their notice – or killed them even, and was staring up at them with eyes that shone radiant with moonlight at a single point in each black pool, alight even without a fire.

But he was not.

"What is it?" her mother asked.

"Nothing," she said. She looked around once more to make sure she had not been fooled thus. All was clear. "An animal or something. He is not here."

"He could not be, darling. We were days ahead and laid a false trail beside." Her arm tightened. She believed what she was saying but Maeglin did not. "He cannot catch up to us now, and even if he does he cannot force us to go back with him. Not the both of us, we would outnumber him."

Maeglin's head was shaking 'no'. "You should pull the hem of your dress up; you can see it beneath the cloak and it is too white."

"Lómiel, my love, he could not take us back – "

"You never understood his powers. He puts a deadly poison on his blades if he goes about the kinslayer lands, and then all he'd need to do is scratch us once – "

"Lómiel, your father would not kill us – "

"Do you really think so!?" Maeglin hissed.

It was not her place to say 'stop thinking like a child'. Those were the words of her father, she did not want her mother to hear them from her now that they were away from him at last.

And yet…

" _Your mother is far older than you, and older than me too, but she is more a child than either of us and ever will be, for that is how they are raised across the sea – and especially the girls. Always told they are wonderful, and everything they do is wonderful, and they are precious, and they are special, and each and every one of them shines brighter than the stars at night. They are coddled and spoiled every one of them. You love your mother more than me for treating you in such a way, it's plain to see, but never forget what happened as soon as one of them was first told 'no' by one who was lesser than an Ainur."_

It was hard to forget when her father reminded them of it daily. But Maeglin did learn from that story, learn that elves would kill other elves, and for less than what would drive her father now.

Her mother only tried to pull her close. "Shh. Shh, my darling, you know he would not. Amme will not let him hurt you again and soon we will be safe and sound in Ondolinde."

 _It is not technically a lie_ , Maeglin told herself, _if she believes what she is saying_. She would not let her mother hold her close though, because it would have prevented her from taking stock of their surroundings. It was some time before her mother relaxed in her attempts.

She did not do so without comment.

"Oh, Lómiel. I am sorry I cannot banish your fears."

 _"Fear is wisdom, something the 'wise elves' know nothing of,"_ Maeglin's father had told her. She understood his reasoning – for he was getting ever closer, she knew this in her heart, and if she'd had no fear of that she'd have no reason to be watchful for his presence, and that would have been foolish indeed.

"You needn't be sorry for that. It is not your fault," she told her mother.

"I am your mother. It is my duty to protect my child."

"I'm not a child."

More than thirty winters already had passed since Maeglin had reached her majority. Since her Initiation. Thirty years as her father had grown less and less inclined to let her leave the wood, and not more as she might once have hoped. The last time she'd seen the Tribe (the last time save the month before when she'd secreted out to see them on her own) her grandmother had accused him of only bringing his daughter to them as much as he had so that by her Initiation Maeglin's mother would be made to suffer.

Maeglin had already figured out that was half the reason he had done it. And then Grandmother had wanted her to become a permanent member of the tribe forthwith, for she had been initiated as one of them, by their most sacred rites. They, Maeglin was sure, would have protected her from her father had she asked it of them. Grandmother had offered as much, after hearing her reasons for leaving.

Grandmother had been the only one she'd told.

But there was no place for Maeglin's mother in the Tribe. None but perhaps the lowest of the mothers; sneered at even by the mothers younger than she – the weak ones, the ones who preferred safety to status in the tribe, who watched the children; cleaned, mended – Maeglin's mother was above such things. It was not her mother's fault she had been brought up by the Noldor.

"You will always be my child," her mother said. Maeglin rolled her eyes.

"And his too," she pointed out. "And of the Tribe. And an Un-Mother of the Tribe and not a mother."

"Daughter, I beg you, do not call yourself that – "

" – and I do not want to play that role in Ondolinde either."

"It is not like that in Ondolinde. I left only because the city had become too small for me as much as anything else – "

"You left because they treated you as a mother, but your spirit is not so. You told me that was how they treated all the girls across the sea."

"You misunderstood me," Maeglin's mother said tiredly. "It is not as you imagine it. Not as your father made it seem – yes, the _nissi_ are raised with different expectations to how a _ner_ would be, and yes, that annoyed me and always had, but they are not blind to the fact that not all children conform to expectation. No one ever thought it odd that more girls than boys applied themselves to healing, or to the tending of the flowers – for it is Estë and Yavanna who govern such things and they are female. Yet it has never been only _nissi_ who take interest in such things, and no _ner_ has ever been turned away from those crafts. The same for girls who wished to study from Aulë, or ride with Oromë – "

"Or fight with Tulkas?" Maeglin interrupted. "Tell me, Mother, would my uncle allow me to ride out to battle with him, as the Un-Mothers have?"

There was a long silence.

In that silence, Maeglin heard from far off a great many things that moved and dwelt within the trees they perched upon. The rustling of feathers. The hum of flying insects. The steps of those that crawled through the decaying leaves upon the ground, and far, far off enough that she was not entirely sure it was anything more than her imagining there was a shrill and unnatural-sounding shriek of something being killed. Only a little thing, but she wondered if the heartbeat thundering like a horse at gallop was that creature's or her own.

Or perhaps it truly was a horse, and galloping ever closer in the darkness; the shadows of Nan Elmoth having long-since trained its eyes for night.

She should have kept Anguirel on her body, she thought, even up in the tree. She needed to be able to defend herself. Yet in the silence, she heard that in Ondolinde she would not be permitted that. The females were protected by the males in the Hidden City.

… weak and helpless little things.

"… Daughter, among our people the _nissi_ do not ride out to battle. Though they may fight if they are besieged. But I would not want you to ride out even if you were my son and not my daughter. My love, you have not seen battle in as mighty and terrible a form as it can take."

"Yet someone's son or daughter must ride out, mustn't they? And for the king's sister's daughter it would be impossible?"

Her mother sighed. "My brother would never take you with him into battle, no."

"And have I not proven myself capable?" she asked. "Did I not ride out with the Un-Mothers in defence of the tribe, and did I not protect you as we crossed the valley?

"I like to think we protected each other, Daughter," said her mother, a little dryly.

… 'protect' had been said poorly, Maeglin thought, even if it were true. An apology was not necessary because it _was_ true, but she pointed this out more gently. "Even so. And I do not think you would be too poor a warrior either, Mother. But I killed more spiders than you did."

There had been no other choice, of course. Maeglin had had to protect her mother. Her saying 'stay behind me, Lómiel, and I will protect you' had been what she had admitted now – a mother's duty to her child. It was Maeglin who was more suited to the sword, for she had been taught to be strong as her mother never had, and the duty of the strong to protect the weak fell upon her.

However, she did not think she would demand obedience from her mother, even if it was the due of the stronger one. She was not yet at the point where she could wield that power, she felt, and even if she had been she did not like the idea of wielding power over her mother. Mother deserved her freedom, after so many years of Father.

As for the spiders, they – however big – were not so terrible as her father finding them would have been, and had been made short work of. Maeglin was more powerful than they, at least.

"Yes, my love. Yes, you did by far. But Lómiel, I thought your heart was in the craft of weapons, not the use of them?"

Maeglin sighed. This was what her father had always meant when he'd said 'self-centred'.

"That may be, yet whatever _pleases_ them the Un-Mothers must be greatly skilled in arts of battle too, for the defence of their people. And I would defend your people too, as a _ner_ would."

"Darling," her mother's voice began to shake, "please do not liken yourself to them. They are mad – twisted by the torments of Morgoth – you are not of their ilk, and a _ner_ is not an… is not one of them. When you are in the city your uncle built, and when you have seen how a people truly great and noble live, you will understand this."

The Un-Mother tribe were not a great people, that was true, and as for noble Maeglin couldn't say. She still remembered one of her father's sisters hiss, _'I'd love to see the look on the Golodh princess' face when she sees her'_ at Maeglin's coming-of-age, and how all the tribe had agreed – aloud or not. She did not think it spoke of their nobility.

The Khazad were a great people, of that she had no doubt, but they were also strange, and she could not have said if they were noble in the deeper places in their halls that she had never seen.

And her father had never let them know that she was a girl.

"The female Khazad do not go out to battle either," she said, a little offhand, a little not. "They do not even leave the mountains."

"They are the children of Aule," said her mother. "And they are as he made them, and not how Eru Illuvatar intended our people to be. But I have not heard it said their females are unhappy."

"I have not heard much of them at all," said Maeglin, "and I do not wish to not be heard of thus."

"My darling, people far and wide will surely hear of you – "

"For what?" Maeglin snorted. "My beauty? My wisdom? My kindness? That is all I have heard of, of the _nissi_ of our family. I can mine and forge metal, and I can fight – even if not as well as some. I don't know how I'd know if I had wisdom and there is no one around for me to be kind to."

"Daughter, you are both wise and kind – "

 _Platitudes,_ thought Maeglin, _the duty of a_ Golodh _mother. I must not stand for it, not even if it would make her happy_. She interrupted, " – and as for beauty I have certain ideas on how it might go if any of your kin saw me beneath my clothes."

Her mother breathed in sharply, "Lómiel…!"

"I do not care, or anything," she said. "Ada has always said beauty is in the depth, and not the surface – not in bright and sparkling things, and I believe him still. But where does that leave me in my uncle's kingdom, Mother?" she paused, and this time said, "Amme?"

The silence was now sharp, despite Maeglin's attempt to soften it with that last word, but it was also briefer than she would have expected. Her mother pulled her in again, and this time with twice the force she'd used before, and Maeglin squirmed but did not break free.

"Lómiel," her mother said, with great feeling, "If you are unhappy in my brother's kingdom we will leave it, and seek out my father in the west, or my cousins if your grandfather's kingdom cannot make you happy either – or some land that no one has ever discovered yet, and we will make it whatever you want it to be!"

She released her, but only a fraction, to cup her face.

"This I swear to you, Lómiel, my love. I swear it."

 _Platitudes_ , thought Maeglin, looking down at her mother's breast.

It struck her that tonight was only the third time she could remember hearing her mother speak of her own father. The great High-King of the Noldor in Beleriand.

The first time had been when she had taught Maeglin of all her kin in general, while Maeglin's father was away and could not interject 'murderer' after every name or simply demand they not be spoken of at all. His rules had to be obeyed, after all, for it was his house.

 _"Am I not your wife?"_ her mother had said once. _"And the lady of this house?"_

 _"No,"_ he had replied. _"For we only married after the house was built, and that was all done with my own hands. Our marriage does not give you any claim on what I made alone – if you wish to be a lady of this house, you must add on to it, with the work of your own hands."_

 _Call his bluff,_ Maeglin had thought. _Demand he teach you to do it – he will listen! He will teach! Do not back down from his challenge!_

But ever had her mother refused to answer his challenges. _"I will not play any game wherein he sets the rules,"_ she'd say.

And so they had obeyed him.

The second time Maeglin had heard a mention of her grandfather had been many years later, pressed against her mother's chest, the scars on her own still tight, fresh from the Initiation.

" _Father!_ " her mother had been sobbing wildly, freezing Maeglin still as stone in her arms, for she had never heard such a cry from her mother before, never. " _Father, I'm sorry! I'm sorry I left – I need you here! I need you, Father, please come to me! Father! Father!"_

Father, father, father – _"_ My father wasn't like yours," her mother had said, long before that day. "Not a lot, anyway, though they both are slow to smile and slower to laugh. But he did not teach me as your father teaches you. Only my brothers." She'd smiled ruefully. "Across the sea sons are treated differently to daughters. And brothers to sisters."

Where she'd given a little laugh years before, on that day she'd screamed _"Father, father!"_ and the names of her older brothers after, as if they'd come if she kept calling for them, and Maeglin had been frightened of her cries.

Behind them, her father had clicked his tongue. _"Calling out for 'Ada', my little bird?"_ he'd mocked. _"I thought you could take charge of your own life?"_

There'd been a hitch in her mother's breath, and she'd turned her head halfway back around to him from where she'd placed herself between him and her daughter, and she'd spat –

_"You monster. You monster – my father will kill you when he finds out what you've done."_

" _Of course he will. They don't call your people 'kinslayers' for nothing_."

But the High-King had done no such thing, had never found out he might have had cause for it, and Maeglin's mother sang a different song now. A song of intercession on Maeglin's father's behalf, and on that of their kin. She did not doubt her mother meant what she said now.

But neither did she doubt that her uncle was great – and if she had been him, or if her father had been him, or if any of the Un-Mothers or the Khazad had been him she knew they would never have let Maeglin's mother simply walk out of the gates of Ondolinde for a second time.

No.

No, the only option was to find a way to make herself great within Ondolinde. Powerful.

Then, she and her mother would at last be safe.

 

*~*~*

 

That night her thoughts took her to darker places, in the woods. Darker times, still freshly blackening the corners of her mind.

"Come closer," he'd said. "Come closer and I will show you something not even your mother has seen. Something no one has seen. Come closer, Daughter, and I will show you a secret that will be yours alone. And that secret will be power that is yours alone."

Maeglin had not trusted the look in his eyes, a dark look that he'd only ever used to inspire fear in her in the past – yet now he spoke of power and secrets and alongside her fear, accordingly, was curiosity.

"Power?" she'd asked him.

"Of a sort."

He'd turned his back to her and thrown his cloak to the forest floor. Then his bow, his quiver. Then his sword. But Maeglin had not felt any safer for it and found herself preparing to step backwards, until –

"Do not put your foot down, Daughter," he had warned her. "Remember that if you show weakness you will regret it. It is good that you fear what is to come, but keep in mind: it is only because I am your father that I rebuke you instead of taking advantage of your weakness."

Maeglin had put her foot back where it had been before. Her father had then taken off his scaled doublet.

"You asked me once when you were a child, why did I wear a mask," he said.

She remembered. "You named me that very night."

"Aye. For not even your mother ever thought to ask. It's true, I use a powerful glamour to disguise myself, but you have known that for some time, haven't you?"

After a pause, she had admitted it.

"Yes."

"I see the mistrust in your eyes. Your mother, I think, has guessed the same, but she puts her trust in me because I am her husband, and that is what she has been raised to do by her 'wise' kindred." He's snorted as he'd pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on his cloak. The skin beneath was white and unblemished, or at least the glamour of it was. "She is a fool."

"Don't call my mother a fool."

"Or you'll do what, Daughter?" his head turned briefly towards her so she could see his mask smirk, but she knew whatever lay beneath had the same expression in this instance. "I thought so." He'd turned back. In his next words, Maeglin heard from him a feeling she'd never heard from him before. "Yet, since it is you, I would have you trust me completely."

Sad, he'd seemed then. Sad and wistful. And Maeglin loved him, and despite her fear her heart had stirred, and rooted her to the spot.

Even after all the rest of his clothes were gone, and he turned around to face her once again. She'd only averted her eyes.

He'd tutted. "It is but a body, Maeglin, forget your sensibilities." He'd pointed at her. "The Khazad have influenced you too much, I think. They are the ones who, for all their wisdom, are so eccentric about nudity."

Maeglin did not know if that was the reason she'd looked away. Why it had been so uncomfortable to look back, even knowing that what she'd see was not even what was really there.

But for the secret – for the power – for that she had forced herself to look.

"Father," she'd asked, her voice small until she'd felt she could make it steady. "Why do you always wear a glamour?"

Her father had stood there, tall despite the strange unevenness in his shoulders, hair chestnut brown and eyes black: her own eyes, looking back at her. His skin was white but for the tattoos; mostly on his back, but with some lines that snaked around so they could be seen from the front – much more intricate and extensive that the ink that decorated Maeglin's shoulder blades.

There was no dirt on his hands, and that made it clear he was disguised. Little by little she noticed other clues as well – there were a few scars here and there but not a single beauty mark, for instance, and in the wind his hair blew strangely, like the strands were clumped together on one side instead of flowing free.

And his teeth, when he grinned at her, they were too white. More like crystal than bone.

"Why indeed?" he'd said. "I rarely had, before your mother came. What point should there have been, for a member of the Brother Tribe?"

'Brother Tribe' was not the name of the tribe of elves Maeglin's father had once belonged to. Rather it was the name given to them by the Un-Mothers, who were themselves all-female. The Brother tribe, before its destruction by the Enemy, had been who they had taken lovers from, from time to time, and by doing so procure new daughters – and, naturally, the ones any sons were given away to when they were weaned.

In ages past Maeglin's father's mother had belonged to a more usual tribe of elves, male and female together. But…

"You are scarred?" she asked him. She'd known the answer already. She'd known it for a long time.

"Oh yes, Daughter," he'd said, grin disappearing. "Oh, that I am."

The wind blew again. It was brief, but made an eerie sound that chilled Maeglin over every inch of her skin.

"The Un-Mothers do not trouble to hide their scars," he said. "Yet even they would have no dealings with me if they knew. Even your grandmother."

Her father never called the one who bore him 'Mother'. For she was Un-Mother. There was a thinner tie between them that could never be that that there was between Maeglin and her own mother.

"Now come closer, and see your father for the first time."

Maeglin's legs trembled, but without her father's respect she knew she would be relegated further and further into the shadows of his cloak for him to keep, and so she took a step forward, towards her naked father.

And he had dispelled the glamour.

…

…

…

She'd told herself she was not looking at an orc. She'd seen orcs twice before, once when they had attacked the tribe when they had been visiting and once between the tribe and Nogrod. The second time her father had used his spells to hide them from the much larger party, but in the first instance one of her aunts had ushered her out, screaming unintelligibly, rabid almost. They all had been, as she had been thrown out to fight alongside them.

Her father had protected her. Had stayed close enough that she had but wounded two of the ones that had come their way. But she had seen them. Deformed and cracked about like something broken and forced back together in the wrong order, she had seen them.

Her father, without the glamour, was the same way – half his face, neck, down his left shoulder and upper arm and over his chest the skin was scarred pink and rough – a burn scar, she thought, but one that should have killed him or healed by now, and not left him in this terrible state. His ear on that side was half gone, his hair patchy, and on the other side the brown was dull, and streaked with grey and white like dwarves were, when at the end of their life.

The deformity in his back was much worse in reality than what it had seemed in glamour; she could not guess how that had been caused – with heavy hammers smashed against her father's spine or some contraption to warp and twist his bones beyond the point they could have been put back to their proper shape…

Her eyes stung. "How are you still alive?" she'd whispered.

A bark of humourless laughter had been her answer.

"How did I live? I know not. Your grandfather did not even survive to reach the pits of Angband, so grieved was he for the death of his youngest. His eldest, your other uncle, died within a year of working their mines – and there was a time that even I was thrown onto a heap of broken corpses, ready for the fires, yet somehow I was not dead."

He took a step closer. Maeglin breathed in sharply, and it took all her willpower not to scramble back. Even his eyes seemed different now, the left clouded over, and the right…

"Somehow, like a rotten slug or worm I crawled off that heap and into a dark and narrow crevice, and somehow, crawling over rocks that scraped apart what skin had not been hardened by all those years of fire and pain I pulled myself out under the sky again."

He grimaced, and then that grimace became a snarl, and as Maeglin stood too horrified by his words to move he came closer and closer.

"I still remember after that first night, waking to the stinging of the Sun upon my back. Like everlasting fire, or the kinslayer jewels _He_ placed upon his brow, ever-burning, ever-shining like an ever-watching eye that always follows me, even into my dreams."

Before she knew what was happening his arms had shot out and grabbed her around the shoulders, painfully, pulling her towards him. She'd brought her arms up to protect her chest and whimpered once but did not – could not, avert her eyes from his.

"And here, the visage that you see before you now was the first face to greet me once I'd found a stream to quench my thirst. Your grandmother told me I had been gone almost a hundred winters when we next saw each other."

Quick as a whip his hands had released her shoulders, slid across them to grasp her wrists in one fluid move and then wrench them apart – he was so strong! Or was she weak, she wondered?

"Now look down," he'd ordered her. She had already had a glimpse, and did not want to look again, but his grip tightened. "Do as I say, this is important!"

Gritting her teeth she looked again, to prove that she was not afraid. Few swathes of skin remained unmarked by criss-crossed scars; blade-marks, lash-marks, claw-marks, she could not tell. But the scars were particularly concentrated in his groin.

Maeglin had never seen a male member apart from her father's when they'd bathed together in her infancy – and even that had only happened once or twice. And, of course, it had been a glamour. She could only assume that that glamour had been what such a member was supposed to look like.

This one was bent awkwardly halfway down, and much of the skin at the head was gone, burned off, and parts were gouged away all up the shaft and where it was not there were those criss-cross marks again, that awful hatch, each mark bled into another as the scars had somewhat-healed, leaving it mottled and unsightly, like something that should have been destroyed altogether rather than look like that. The pouch behind them looked no better.

 _How?_ She'd thought. _How is he alive? How do I even exist after that…_

Then he'd pulled her left hand down against it.

"Feel it," he'd demanded, split and ragged lips against her ear. "They twisted everything about me that they could, even here," she tried to pull her hand away but his grip tightened, bruised her. "The scars run deep, the flesh no longer remembers sensation as it used to and where once the touch of another would have been for pleasure now it causes only pain," he gasped. "… and a knife in the gut would hurt me less than reaching completion."

His other hand had closed around her hair and pulled her head back, so she was forced to look into his eyes.

"You have no idea," he'd hissed, "what agony it was for me to create you. Your mother has no idea. But ah… here you are, my daughter. Here you are, and here you will stay, and I will suffer that pain again a thousand times for you!"

He did not mean 'for your sake' by 'for you', she'd feared. And she'd feared more what he meant by 'again'.

"… Father," she'd whined. But she could think of nothing else to say.

"All for you," he'd said again. There'd been something even like tears in his voice. "All those years, all those fires, every part of me they cut away I lived for you – because you would be born one day, and I would have you for my own."

 _Yes_ , she thought. _He really means that._

"But Father," she'd tried, "Mother – "

"Your mother doesn't know!" he'd snapped. "She doesn't understand, how could she? She still wears her outer flesh all but perfect, or what her people think is perfect, while their hearts turn black." His fingertips had dug harsher into her wrist – one of her hands had now been free but she couldn't think what to do with it. "She'll leave us, Daughter," he'd said. "She left her home, she left the kingdom her father founded, she left the kingdom her brother founded and one day she'll be bored of us and leave us too – would have already had I not taken steps to keep her here."

Suddenly, Maeglin's back was up against a tree she'd had no notion she was being backed into, and she'd had nowhere to go.

"But you will stay here with me," her father had whispered.

Finally, he'd let go of her hair and wrist. His hands returned to her shoulders, pushing her against the mossy bark.

"You and I shall always be together."

Then his hands had moved in, she thought at first to wrap around her neck, and she'd struggled up in a vain attempt at escape, fingers scrabbling at her father's bare arms to try and pull them away.

But he did not try to strangle her. His calloused palms had only brushed her throat for a second, feather-light, before sliding down to grip the collar of her shirt. He'd pulled down viciously, tearing the fabric apart, ripping the steel fastenings out of the cloth until the garment was held together only by an inch at the back, the two sides pulled apart and down her arms as fast as she could blink, baring her chest.

She'd screamed at the suddenness of it. Then she couldn't breathe. She'd stared deep into his eyes again to try and glimpse some escape to this, but the clouded one gave her nothing and the other…

… the other stared down at her great twin scars, given the night of her Initiation into the Tribe. Pink and thick, in shapes that couldn't be compared to natural things, they might have resembled something of his own skin if any of his scars had not been overlaid with others. He'd grabbed her just above her elbows, pulled her arms in against her sides so she couldn't move them, stroked over the scars with his thumbs.

"You could understand," he'd said. "Not yet, you are too young – but you could, if only you stayed by my side."

"Enough!" she'd spat at him, "Get off me!"

Maeglin had tried to kick him, but he had pressed his body up between her legs and she could only graze him with her heels. She couldn't breathe. He was too close.

He hadn't seemed to notice her attempts.

"You could understand," he'd said. "You felt the touch of that pain too. You're stronger than your mother."

Each trailing digit against that skin had felt like it might as well have been the flat of a knife, ready to turn and cut into her at the slightest provocation, open her and bleed her like his kin had done all those summers past.

Come to think of it, she'd remembered then, it had been that night she'd first seen the glimpse of his true face beneath the glamour. The glow of the firelight had cast strange shadows, and she had been delirious for hours with pain and blood loss. He had stayed by her and watched the entire time.

The Un-Mothers knew well by now how to make another elleth Un-Mother. The centuries had passed since the old tribe had been set upon, captured and taken to the Enemy; long, long before their Brother Tribe met the same fate, and even before Maeglin's father had been born. The orcs had separated them for the Cruel One's experiments – to see how much damage could be taken by an elf before their souls fled their bodies. An arm. A leg. Two arms or two legs. For the females of the old tribe…

A breast. Most lived after the amputation of a breast, even under orc care.

Two breasts. Most lived even then. And it was not so debilitating as the loss of an arm or leg, for what use were breasts but for feeding the children? Indeed, without them they ran faster than before, many said could shoot more easily than before, and surely that had contributed to their escape from Angband?

Maeglin's grandmother had lead them out, thirty elves bound about their chests and twenty more who had been kept in waiting for the same to be done to them. Those ones were the mothers, the ones who kept the means by which to nurse the children of the tribe, for though the Un-Mothers would go on to bear children, they would never 'mother' them. When the tribe had expanded, gained new daughters, those daughters had been given the choice – mother or Un-Mother, to mind the children, do the menial work, obey and enjoy protection or to risk their lives for the defence of the Tribe and undergo Initiation.

Maeglin had chosen the latter. The worthier path. As a granddaughter of the tribe she'd had that right. And since leaving Angband not a single elleth had died undergoing Initiation. Her father's own work had been used to complete the procedure, the blade true and clean, and the flesh sewn up skilfully and quick.

It had not been that bad, at the time. She had been praised for her control.

But oh, how her mother had _screamed_ when they'd returned home…

"You lost this flesh for me," her father had told her, holding her against that tree. "Because despite your looks you are my daughter before hers, born in my forest, with my spirit and my will – and not that of the shallow, vacant kinslayers – "

"I chose Initiation for myself!" Maeglin had yelled back. "Not for you or Mother! And you cannot… you cannot… !"

She couldn't bring herself to say it.

"Cannot what, Daughter?" he'd sneered. "Cannot join myself to you, unite our souls?"

"I don't want to share my soul, I want it for myself!"

He'd laughed. "You are rebellious, like your mother. But in time you will understand."

The grimace on his face had told her he'd been in pain, yet her futile kicks, she'd thought, had been causing him nothing of the sort – or at least causing so little that someone as learned in pain as he had barely felt it.

"Understand what?!" she'd cried back, trying to wrestle her body out of his grip.

"Understand how terrible it is to be alone," he'd whispered.

For some reason she'd stilled then, as though something in his words had chilled her even more than what he'd intended at that moment, than the whole reason he'd brought her out into that wood.

Then he'd winced, made a soft grunt of pain and shut his eyes. Then she'd felt him hardening against her; rising, pushing, pressing at her lower stomach. She'd not understood exactly what was happening, knew only the basics of the act of union as her mother had taught her when she had been a child, but her fear changed all the same. Her heart had thundered in her chest against the inside of those scars, and she'd known that if she did not find some way to stop her father then something irreversible would happen.

Foolishly, she'd thought she had respite when he pulled her away from the tree. But he had done this only to keep her still with one arm while the other reached around and pulled her breeches down over her hips. Bare skin was pressed to bare skin and she shivered – she had been a child when last her skin had pressed up against that of one of her parents in this way. It felt strange now; wrong, and she too terrified to think of what to do.

And yet at the same time, there had been a wretched kind of warmth.

"Understand," her father spoke into her ear as he pushed her back against the tree, "that only I will ever be able to ease that loneliness. That only I will ever know you, understand you – love you, as would satisfy your soul."

She couldn't breathe – he had been pressing against her too hard, pressing his forehead against hers, as though if he pushed hard enough he thought he could take the whole of her within him – swallow her entirely, his forever. Forever in his darkness. Her breeches had dropped around her ankles and she couldn't even kick him as she had before – tried knocking her head against him but ended up hurting herself more than him.

 _He is strong_ , she'd thought, somewhere beneath her fear. _He is strong, so strong. He is still alive after all that, somehow._

Out loud she could only say, "No! No, I don't want to!"

"You are too young to know what you really want," he'd told her. "And I will give you this before you have to wander down the whole painful trail of finding out it was your fate all along."

"No!" she'd insisted. "I'll make my own fate!"

He'd laughed brokenly then. "Foolish girl. Just as I was once. We are each other's fate, Daughter. Your mother will leave, and you and I will live here together, as One."

"No!" she'd cried, and what else could she have said? She was not as strong as he was, she'd only begun to understand his true strength in that moment.

So he pulled her up an inch or so, the rough parts of the bark scraping the ink on her back, and the head of his member had been against her, and she'd shrieked like some thoughtless animal. The terror of it made her sick, in her stomach, but below that at the point where _that_ part of him was touching _that_ part of her there was a burn she'd never felt before; painful, and something other than painful she couldn't name but scared her even more than pain.

His member had slipped below that point and towards the entrance to her body – to marry her, make her his wife, his girl, his Maeglin, even if it meant making himself hers he didn't seem to care, when he was supposed to be her mother's… _Ai, what will Mother do if he does this!?_

His right hand had left her arm, slid across her body, across her scars, down to that part of her and when it touched her that strange pain that was not pain came to her again and she tried to stifle her scream this time but heard it clearly enough through her clenched teeth.

Then he'd stopped.

All at once, with his hand on that boiling point, his body had stopped pushing, froze – all she'd felt was a slight, sharp intake of breath…

… and just like that he'd pulled away, and let her sink down against a root.

"You did not choose to become Un-Elleth," he'd said, almost casually.

Maeglin had flopped away like a fish stuck on land, trying to pull her breeches back up even as she escaped and crawled along the mud, even as her father had once crawled off a pile of corpses. Futile as the attempt was she also tried to pull the halves of her shirt back up onto her shoulders, gripping the sides together at the collar while she regained a grasp of her surroundings.

As soon as her eyes had fallen on her father's weapons he'd seen it, and taken the two slow steps that put himself between them and her.

"Don't bother," he'd snorted, with half a smile. "You are not Un-Elleth after all. I was mistaken. This will have to wait."

"Wait," she stuttered out, still barely breathing though the air was rushing in and out of her lungs in giant gulps. "Wait… what?"

"The Chieftain hasn't offered you the second choice yet," her father had remarked. "You'd take it if you knew. I know you, and I know you would. Maybe they don't even do that anymore though."

"Take what?" she'd asked, head spinning. "What choice?!"

"There is something else," he'd told her, "that can be taken in exchange for strength. Or that's the way they see it. You would be more like me then; you would not feel pleasure in the act of union. It would make you stronger."

Pleasure? What was he talking about? She'd guessed he meant that spot between her legs where he'd touched her, but she had felt no pleasure there, nor did she now – only a wretched sensitivity that was somehow also a numbness. The cloth had felt rough against her now she'd pulled it back up. She hated it.

And yet he'd believed in what he was saying, she could tell. And he was strong.

"Like you?" she'd whispered almost to herself.

"Yes," he'd said. "Like me. It is our fate. But you are not strong enough to bear it yet. I don't know why I thought you were. Sometimes, Daughter, I forget what secrets are and are not concealed by the shadows in my mind."

He'd tapped at his temple with one index finger, smiling now more manically. The one good eye seemed alight with fire, as it had the night of her Initiation, even after the flames that had cauterised her wounds had been put out. She'd sensed a power in him she had not conceptualised in any way before.

 _This is why Mother has not been able to leave the Wood_ , she'd thought gravely. _He is too powerful. I must gain more strength if I am to escape him. I must become powerful._

She'd said nothing of what had just occurred. There'd been no need. They'd both understood the situation then.

"Come," he'd said. "Your mother has not left us yet. She'll be back before noon tomorrow, and it would be well that we returned first."

He'd given her a look that promised a terrible doom.

"I do not like to think what would happen if _she_ saw either of us in this state."

A chill wind had passed through the summer wood. The pale, smooth skin of the glamour had begun to spread out in swirls and tendrils across her father's body. That strange, clumped hair that didn't move right with the gust. His voice had lightened,

"Ask your grandmother about casting off the weakness of an elleth and becoming Un-Elleth, next you see her. You must be more alike to me before we can become as One."

It had been strange. Stranger than another might have thought.

Her father had spoken their native tongue, yet using that word like that, she thought, was more alike to the use the Khazad had for it – and she knew, though she'd never been told, that 'One' was not a bond for a father and daughter in the eyes of the peoples of the world.

Yet she did not question that her father would seek it. She had been shocked, but in the end not surprised. It made sense, seeing as it was him – for he was Father, and not like anyone else.

Which was not by any means to say it was something _she_ sought. The wind had passed, and he'd started putting his own clothes back on.

"Next time," he'd said, "it will be different."

She'd hidden her face with her neck bent, hair falling in front so he would not see the promise of _'There will be no next time'_.

 

*~*~*

 

Maeglin did not sleep that night, and so that memory was no dream she woke up from, but a constant reminder of why she could not allow herself or her mother to be caught.

Even Grandmother had agreed she must leave her father's house, and had arranged the replacement horses – though she'd griped about Maeglin going to the kinslayers.

_"Remember, girl, they are the ones who were deceived by the Dark One in the first place, and so your father's fall to darkness is their fault. And they will consign you to mother-work, even if you are the king's sister-daughter, and you will weaken like a dead tree, slowly rotting into so many splinters."_

_I will not weaken_ , Maeglin had said, to her grandmother and to herself.

She had not mentioned becoming 'Un-Elleth' to her then. True, Maeglin wanted to become stronger, but her father had also said to undergo _this_ process would bring them closer to being 'one', and that she did not want. There were other ways to become powerful, she thought. In Ondolinde, there would be other ways.

The light of the sun filtered down through the leaves of this diminished forest and speckled the floor and the branches all around them – all still seeming like the holes through which a thousand eyes were looking at her and ready to report their movements to her father. She had to dig her nails into her palms to find the strength to look around, her heart certain she would look in one direction and there he'd be, waiting, blades in hand.

He was not. And it was light enough for the horses to ride now.

Beside Maeglin, her mother stirred.

"Darling, you're shaking," she said softly. "Don't be afraid. Everything is going to be all right."

Anxiety made Maeglin's patience run thin. "I wish you would not make these promises you have no way of guaranteeing," she muttered. "We need to move quickly – he'll have ridden through the night and might still be coming if the clouds are on his side."

"He won't catch up to us now," said her mother. "And we are nearly there. Tonight you will spend within your uncle's halls in safety, and in comfort."

Maeglin hoped so. She hoped so, but felt that it would not happen if she dared expect it, so kept on thinking 'he is right behind us, he is right behind us'. She clicked her tongue and wriggled out from under her mother's arm to jump down to a lower branch and then to the roots. Heart jumping, in case that was the moment he chose to strike, she whirled around to check for unwanted company before calling back up:

"It's safe, as far as I can see. We should make haste."

Her mother was slower in descending, the white dress wrapping itself around her legs like spider silk. Why she wore those things, however aesthetically pleasing they were, still baffled Maeglin when there was no need to follow impractical Noldor dress customs out here.

 _"I want them to know it's me when we arrive,"_ her mother had said, with a conspiratorial smile. But how was that garment her, and not her face? Maeglin had wondered. Those clothes were for the protected, for they could not protect themselves in them, but Maeglin's mother was not that weak. Needn't be that weak.

"Ah, the hem is all but gone and what remains is more mud than silk – now they'll really know it's me!" she said now, laughing. Maeglin did not laugh. She did not understand why her mother did.

Somewhere in a tree nearby a sparrow called, and its companions answered, and Maeglin's mother came towards her and put her hands on her shoulders. Maeglin forced herself not to shrug them off.

"We're nearly there, my love," said her mother. "A few more hours at the most. And I've been thinking about what we talked of last night, and I have an idea."

Maeglin frowned.

"An idea?"

"Mm," said her mother. "Come, let's move out, and I can tell you what I think we should do on the road."

Curiously, Maeglin took one last look at the path behind them to make sure he was not on the horizon, then followed her mother in climbing onto her horse. Both mares were difficult to handle – bred by the Un-Mothers and used to a firmer hand than what Maeglin's mother would show them, but with almost amused admonishments the two mounts came to bear.

This way of doing things still made Maeglin nervous. It would have been typical for the beast to throw her mother now, on the last leg of the journey, and break her neck mere moments from the gates of Ondolinde. She did not trust it.

Her own mount suddenly whinnied and lurched to the side – she'd sensed Maeglin's nerves and responded in kind. Steeling herself, Maeglin hissed at the creature and tugged sharply on its mane to discipline it – it yelped, but then fell into line.

"Ai, Lómiel, please do not hurt her so, she is only a horse."

"She has a job to do," said Maeglin, "and will do it if she doesn't want to end up in a stew."

"Don't be cruel," her mother chastised, but Maeglin did not think so light a rebuke 'cruelty'.

Cruelty was found in whispers, and in un-whispers that lurked in the corner of his eyes, and the sound of a lock on the door. And silence. Maeglin was not cruel.

They started off at a steady trot, deeper into this small forest, and all the time Maeglin's mother was smiling. The trees on their right rustled with a morning breeze, and then another, similar sound caught Maeglin's attention, and she looked over her shoulder.

Through the moss-clad trunks in a clearing just within her view a large, dark shape was heaped upon the ground and, like shadows, the fluttering smaller shapes of black carrion birds surrounded it. A horn pronged like a twirling branch jutted out from the larger mass – an antler. A stag, dead.

She saw no reason to think it odd, yet for some reason her gaze lingered.

Then from the blur that was the forest beyond she saw a paler shape approaching. It made no sound upon the forest floor that she could hear but came amongst the squabbling crows almost without them noticing, and they stirred more vehemently when they finally did it within their midst – some leaving the scene entirely. 

It was a second deer; Maeglin saw its head lower to the dark corpse to investigate. This species was horned in both sexes, though the females' were smaller, but she could not say from this far away whether this one was a female or a young male.

Meanwhile, the crying of the carrion had been loud enough now for her mother to hear.

"Goodness, what is that commotion over there?" she asked, craning her neck. "I cannot quite see that far…"

"Birds," said Maeglin, dismissively, "Fighting over a dead thing."

Some strange pull within her stomach stopped her from saying anything about the other deer. Then it lifted up its head and looked at her.

 _Blood,_ she thought.

For a moment her heart stopped, and she was seized with a terror she did not and never would understand. The muzzle of the deer was red – dark red. Dark-bright, in the way that only blood could be, stark against its ash-grey fur. It was looking right at her.

And then the moment passed.

 _It was nuzzling its companion's wound to see if aught could be done,_ Maeglin told herself. _It was not drinking its blood. Deer do not drink blood._

"Ah, that is sad," said her mother. She had not seen. "Daughter, tell me – when your father took you to Nogrod after you had reached your majority, how did the dwarves not know by your voice that you were a girl?"

Maeglin looked again and the deer was gone, vanished back into the shadows of the forest if it had ever been there in the first place. But her fear had still stopped her voice, and though in her mind she saw the leaves floating around the dark water above the open flame she could not think then how to put that image into words.

"Lómiel?"

She took a deep and sudden breath.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, there was… there was a dr – a tea," she couldn't pick the words before they left her mouth, "that Father made. It made me – it made my voice sound just… just enough like a boy's. Later I learned to control the muscles – the muscles in my throat… I can control them well enough to sound – to sound like a _ner_."

"Darling, are you all right?"

Maeglin shrugged. "I'm fine."

"You're nervous," said her mother.

"No, I'm not."

"It's all right. But dearest, let me tell you my idea, and we'll see what you think of it. It's hard for me, as your mother, not to think of you as my daughter – meaning as a girl, but after thinking on it for some time I don't think it would be so immediate a thought for the rest of our people."

On one level, Maeglin knew immediately what she was suggesting. It didn't quite register though, what with the measure – and the many measures she guessed without envisioning them would be required to support it – seeming so outlandish, so drastic.

And yet…

"What," she asked hesitantly. "… because I have no breasts?"

Her mother could not entirely keep from flinching. "In part, but you are also tall – as is the wont of our family, and though slender you are not far off in build from some of my brother's courtiers. I don't think they would know immediately by looking at you what your sex was. And if I said 'this is my son', and your voice was as that of a ner, what reason should they have to think differently?"

It was true Maeglin was a few inches taller than her mother. Yet she was not convinced. Her disguise might have fooled the Khazad, but they could barely tell male elf from female when their genders were not disguised and in her experience had almost boasted of this. Things were different in the Un-Mother tribe.

As the only survivor of their Brother Tribe, Maeglin's father was the only male of her kind she had ever seen about that tribe. Or anywhere else for that matter, save for a few brief glimpses and encounters with travellers on the road. She could have counted them on one hand. But her father was different to the females, mother or Un-Mother, and that had always been apparent.

And yet… had that been because he had been male? Grandmother was no shorter than her son. More slender, Maeglin thought, as her own mother had said. So were all the members of the Tribe. She could only trust her mother's word that there were Lords in the Hidden City with the same look.

So it was with trepidation that she asked, "Then… you think we should tell the king that I am a _ner_ ; your son?"

"Only for a while," said her mother. "Until he and all the others have had the chance to see that you could meet them on equal terms if given the chance – they could not possibly justify forcing you into a role you were unsuited for then!"

"He would allow us to get away with such deception?" Maeglin asked. She couldn't believe it, seeing what she had of both the other peoples she knew. The pride of an even greater King offended thus would _surely_ have had to have been answered for.

But her mother thought otherwise. "It would be a lesson for them all, and one a long time coming," she declared, both amused and indignant somehow. "And you needn't worry about any punishment from my brother, he is a soft-hearted fellow in truth."

 _Then how can he be ruler_? Maeglin thought. His people would only ever obey his commands to humour him, and if one was given that they truly had objection to they would not follow it. Were not Maeglin and her mother, here, now, rejecting the command of her father only because there was a good enough chance he would not catch them?

She checked the road behind once more and still did not see his shadow in the trees. But he was getting closer. He was always getting closer.

"So I say we should do it," said her mother. "Tell my brother you are my son, and Lómion instead of Lómiel, and there will be no dresses or flowery necklaces for you, though I still fancy you would look stunning in them – "

Even the lingering fear of her father's shadow could not prevent Maeglin from rolling her eyes.

 _Mother was raised by the Golodhrim_ , she reminded herself again. _She means no insult by suggesting the attire made for weaker creatures would suit me well._

" – and you will be given a House of your own instead of being taken into my brother's."

Maeglin glanced away from the road behind them, and at her mother. "And… you would live with me… in my house?" she asked.

"Hmm? Oh, of course, my love – if I didn't think you would prefer your space I'd have us share a room." She laughed a little. "But I did not mean only the structure of a building, but a House such as each of the Lords of Gondolin possesses, and the people who come with it."

"People?"

There was a strange lurch in Maeglin's stomach when she said it.

"Your household," said her mother. "Those who would choose to serve you."

"You think they would?"

"Of course!" her mother cried. "Many would want to join the House of the king's nephew, and many more when they see how talented you are!"

"I – "

" – and, when it is revealed to them that you are Lómiel, and not Lómion," her mother grinned brightly, "I'll wager even more will want to join your House, for they will admire your courage and ingenuity."

Many things did Maeglin want to say to that. To ask what, exactly, having all these people join her 'House' would mean. What they would _do_ from day to day. She also might have pointed out that pretending to be a _ner_ was her mother's idea, and so no genius of hers, though the more she thought about it, the more it appeared… as long as her uncle was not wroth when the deception was revealed…

Yet what she actually said was, "Surely they would not be calling me 'Lómion' or 'Lómiel'. That is _your_ name for me."

Her mother chuckled, yet there was some hint of apprehension in her eyes when she replied.

"Darling, simply because it is your mother-name does not mean only your mother may use it. It is the name I gave to you, as Maeglin is the name your father gave to you, so you are as much Lómiel as Maeglin." She paused. "And in my brother's city, I think they will prefer to use the name I gave you."

She sounded as though that would have been her wish too, but Maeglin felt her hands clench in the horse's mane, the leather of her gloves creaking. She thought of anyone aside from her mother calling her 'Lómiel', and she did not like it. She thought of being called 'Lómion', and a strange feeling was in her chest that she could not describe.

'Lómiel' was a pet-name to her, even if it was not to her mother, and she suffered her mother to use it because she was her mother, but in all honesty it annoyed her. She was too old for 'dearest', 'darling', and for 'Lómiel' – the names given to a little child. She was not a child. She was not weak.

She was Maeglin. Even though she disliked that _that_ name had been bestowed upon her by her father when she'd rather have chosen her own, she remembered yet his words on the subject, and they yet remained within her heart.

" _For all their wisdom there is another foolishness the Khazad share with the kinslayers; in their particularities in naming people. What use is a name but a sound to mark one 'you' from another? You needn't have had one at all and would still have been yourself, and in our home there had been only one 'girl' for me to call on_."

'Girl' had been what he'd called her before 'Maeglin'. Or 'daughter'.

" _In the world outside where too many other people have girls of their own it is fitting that you should be Maeglin. But your mother told me once she'd give you a 'mother-name', as is the custom of her people. And I would give a name, and you would further choose your own name, and you would have some sort of pet-name, and there would be a name for every occasion – each representing something different, as though a person could not be represented by one word, but two, or five, or twelve or twenty – or however many ridiculous words they need to reflect their self-importance,_ that _could sum up a person._ "

He'd laughed.

" _Perhaps your mother's people are as shallow as to have that work for them. I would not be surprised. But you and I, and my kin out on the plains and behind the Girdle – we are different_."

And Maeglin had said, and not for the first or last time –

" _If you hate Mother's people so much, why did you marry Mother?_ "

" _I have already told you this_ ," her father had replied. " _It is no fault of mine if you cannot remember._ "

But Maeglin never did remember that time he'd apparently given her the answer to her question. She suspected greatly that he was lying, and to himself too in order to conceal that it was a lie. Either way she had grown tired of his complaining about 'the kinslayers'.

On the subject of names though, her father had made sense. A name was but another sound, and it troubled her to think that when she had been younger she had been so filled with joy to have one, at the age of twelve. Why would she have thought it such a boon, she wondered now, when before 'Mother', 'Father' and 'Myself' had been sufficient? She did not remember knowing the names of her parents before then. Why should it have meant so much?

Meanwhile the trees had been growing further apart, and up ahead had thinned out altogether, leaving only open plain between them and the mountain ahead, and the ever-watching Sun above to mark them out to anyone miles around with its burning light.

"And we shall find a name for your House too," her mother was saying. "Hmm, let me think what would suit you best… The House of Twilight is too alike to just your name, I think, and Lord Rog already has a House of the Hammer. You like best to make the craft of war, of course, but I think House of the Sword or House of the Shield is too plain."

Maeglin rolled her eyes.

"If I had been given a House of my own," her mother said, and she could not keep the wistfulness from her voice, and Maeglin felt sad for her and regretted having been annoyed, "we would have been the House of the White Hawk, for we would have flown free and hunted keenly."

She smiled, and not insincerely, but Maeglin knew she longed for what had been denied her. And if such things were denied to _nissi_ among the Noldor then, she thought, she _would_ pass as a _ner_ for her mother's sake and gain the House her mother had deserved. That _Maeglin_ would deserve, and prove she did once it was given to her.

But to take her mother's mind off it she asked, "Is there much ground for game to travel on within the Hidden City? It is enclosed… and I assume you would need land for crops…"

"Yes," said her mother. "Most of the available land is used for farming and there is little wilderness within or without the walls. It would have made my idea for a House untenable anyway, so I never asked for one." She sighed. "I would have appreciated it if my brother had asked me, nonetheless."

"Then will you not be miserable as before, when we are within the walls?"

"If you are with me, and you are happy, then I will be happier there then I have ever been anywhere else."

Her mother smiled as she said that, a beautiful smile, and Maeglin's heart fluttered a little, yet for all that deep inside her head she did not entirely believe her.

She would not press though. Her mother would not like to be questioned over that for it would make her more sad, and there was much still for Maeglin to say to take her mind off the shadow she was certain crept up behind them, even if it vanished every time she looked. One thing in particular was on her mind.

"Mother…" she began slowly, checking behind them once more, just to be sure. "The way of the _Gol_ – of the _Noldor_ being what it is, would I as a _ner_ be considered my uncle's heir over his own daughter?"

Her mother glanced at the road they'd come down also, with a troubled frown.

"Hmm," she said. "That, I could not say for sure – though I suspect you would be. To lead the people into battle is the duty of the head of the people, and I think the lords of Ondolinde would be horrified to imagine Itarille riding against the hordes of the Enemy… as I would be, if I thought either of you were in such danger."

Maeglin rolled her eyes, for her mother had said as much only the night before.

"… it would be different, I suppose, if Itarille had a husband who could command an army… and though I'm sure you would make a wonderful queen I would not wish to deny my niece her rights – she is very dear to me, you know. But anyway in all these circumstances it would mean my brother was dead, and the Valar willing that will never come to pass."

The solemnity and edge of pain in her mother's voice in the last remark – her younger brother had already lost his life to the forces of the Enemy and likely she was thinking of that – dissuaded Maeglin from continuing their conversation on that vein. Instead, after a short pause, she asked –

"Amme," trying the word out again, since her mother had liked it before, "what does my cousin do in Ondolinde anyway?"

Her mother blinked. "Itarille? Do?"

"How does she spend her days, I mean? You have only said before that she is always running, and surely she cannot simply run laps for days on end?"

"Oh!" her mother cried, and laughed – this time with amusement. "Oh, no – though I'd wager if she could, she would – but she has another calling too. Her mother, Elenwë – I have told you of her? She was of the Vanyar, who are considered the closest of the Quendi to the Valar."

Indeed, Maeglin's mother had mentioned her sister-in-law Elenwë before, and spoken of her death upon the Helcaraxë as well, and Maeglin assumed that was why she suddenly went quiet and looked away, far off into the west as the Sun climbed up behind. Maeglin waited for her mother to continue for what seemed a long time.

"Few of their people, those who married among our kin, chose to follow my uncle – even if their spouses did. My own grandmother would not be stirred to avenge her husband, nor my own mother to support hers, or her children." There was bitterness there, and at once Maeglin felt a small hatred for her grandmother and great-grandmother, for not coming to these shores with their children.

But they were _nissi_ raised in Noldor lands, she supposed, and so it was to be expected they had not been strong enough for it. Maeglin's own mother had been special, in that regard. Her father had always said so.

"Elenwë though, who perhaps had the greatest reason to stay behind – her only child still so young – she came with us, with my brother." Her mother smiled. "Though I think she did not really approve of our quest, she was determined to support my brother in all his ventures. Such was the love between them." _The love I would have wished for,_ she seemed to say. "Yet, raised as she was among the Vanyar, she counselled us ever to be mindful of the Valar, and pray to them and try to understand their judgement – and to give thanks to the Creator for ourselves and for each other, no matter how hard things became."

She sighed again.

"Even towards the end she believed that so strongly. And she taught Itarille to always love the Creator and the Valar too, and when she died it was her daughter who took over in that respect."

"Took over… talking about the Valar all the time?" Maeglin struggled somewhat to understand.

Her mother snorted. "Something like that, if not so simple. Itarille acts as spiritual leader for the people and it was always she who would organise ceremonies of worship and any other festival besides to lift the people's spirits." Her smile became loving again, admiring, and Maeglin found she did not like this. "Even when there is no event or festival she runs from house to house to see if there is aught the people need; I do not think a babe was born in Ondolinde or a couple engaged without her bringing them a gift – and, of course, she would let her father know of all these happenings, which is important for the King."

"As in… an inventory?" Maeglin asked, still struggling.

She supposed the king would have to know how many people were in the kingdom to keep track of what supplies were needed… and perhaps a marriage meant more people would be on the way so it would be important to know that too… but surely her cousin could not have spent all her time preoccupied with _that_?

But again, her mother laughed. "For mere record-keeping my brother has clerks a-plenty. Nay, as I said, while it is my brother's duty to see that the people are well-fed and protected in body, Itarille is the one who makes sure they are happy in their hearts, and that our people remember they are still loved by those across the sea, even sundered from them."

That sounded to Maeglin, frankly, like a gilded way of saying her cousin did nothing of any importance – for surely these people could run their own lives without their princess to act as second mother? What was more that second part seemed a perpetuation of outright falsehood. The Valar did not love their people; they had been disobeyed and so abandoned them – and if her mother had meant their own _kin_ across the sea then Maeglin doubted they loved the exiles all that much either, or they would have joined them in their exile.

Still, she tried to make sense of it. "And… she 'leads' the people in praise of the Creator? How is that achieved?"

Her mother gave her a strange look. Then glanced away, like she was ashamed of something – had Maeglin said something wrong? Her heart seized for a moment.

"Ah, you would not know, I suppose. How we offer worship as a community."

"Why would we do such a thing?" Maeglin asked. "If the Valar no longer favour us either way because of the kinslaying," _or because we did not make the journey to Aman in the first place_ , she thought privately, "then why bother clamouring for their attention?"

"We must believe we have not been forgotten," her mother said. "Elenwë never lost hope, and even after her death neither did Itarille, for her mother had instilled that faith in her. Sure enough, my older brothers were both shown favour by the Valar even after coming to these lands."

 _But the Valar also hate the Enemy, and wish to see him fail,_ thought Maeglin, _and it makes more sense that it is to vex him that they have done these favours, not to help us_. Her mind turned again to the grasping shadow that watched them from the corners their eyes could not reach. _They would not forgive us for turning our backs on them._

 _They would never forgive._ He _would never forgive._

She shuddered. "So my cousin spends most of her time on frivolous things," she said quickly, to make the coldness pass.

Once more her mother laughed, but now with not so much amusement. "They are not so frivolous as you make them sound, my love. But that is something else you could not know."

 _Did I do something wrong?_ wondered Maeglin.

Then her mother forced herself to brighten up, exclaiming, "But you will learn now, and everything that seems strange in what I say will be as second nature to you before you know it. As for your cousin, she is not like anyone you have met before, I think. But you and she will become dear friends in time – I know it."

Maeglin looked back down the road behind them yet again.

 _Platitudes,_ she thought again, as again even though squinting brought no sign of him he felt closer to them than he ever had. _But I will humour her._

She did not think she and this princess would so easily fall into step. There was a certain foreboding in her heart in this respect. For she had no wish to befriend someone who served no useful purpose that she could see – there would be enough to do in Ondolinde, she expected, without being compelled to address whatever petty whims this delicate, 'dancing' flower (was that what dancing meant?) would –

"Ah, but we are almost at the path," said her mother, smiling almost like there was starlight on her face, "Lómiel – look ahead!"

Maeglin wanted to, and would have, but a panic suddenly seized her and she did not – for _he_ was always behind them, and if she did not watch that path too...

…

…

_"Steely little eyes you have, Daughter. They cut and cut. Look through what is placed before them instead of at."_

…

_"But you know, you miss seeing what is truly there just as much that way."_

…

…

_He laughs._

She heard his voice on the shivering wind that ushered them towards that strange future, and looked back.

Was that a flash of movement, on the horizon?

 

 

*~*~*

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A Note on the main character's name: In regards to Lomion/Lomiel, my googling research lead me to conclude that while there were other feminine suffixes that I could have used, changing '-ion' to '-iel' was probably the best.  
> As for 'Maeglin'... from what I can tell, this is technically a gender-neutral name, (I say technically meaning I have inferred it is grammatically neutral, but still feel like as a name it might have masculine connotations, kind of like the name 'Forest' would for English-speakers, or like 'Sky' would be assumed the name of a girl) but if I'm wrong then you can put Eol's choice to call his daughter that down to eccentricity.


End file.
